Armenia Detains Russian Tourist on U.S. Warrant for REvil Hacker, Lawyers Say Wrong Man
Summary: Armenia has held Russian tourist Aleksandr Ermakov in a detention center since June 28 on a U.S. extradition request tied to REvil ransomware, but his lawyers say Washington has the wrong man and that the wanted suspect is Aleksandr Gennadievich Ermakov, sanctioned in January 2024 for the Medibank breach and serving a two-year Russian sentence that bars him from leaving Russia. The U.S. charging document describes Sodinokibi/REvil attacks from roughly April 2019 to July 12, 2021 with more than 1,000 victims, while the Interpol notice built on it names an administrator who took over $13.7 million.
Why it matters: The defense says the U.S. paperwork carried only a given name and surname with no patronymic, and that neither fingerprints nor full passport data have been produced - so an automated name match may be the whole basis for a man sitting in a cell while the sanctioned Ermakov reports monthly to the Russian prison service.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
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